WEBVTT NOTE 35. The Mutiny Act 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Volume 3, Part 5. The Townsend Crisis, 1766-1770 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:14.880 Volume 3, Chapter 35. The Mutiny Act Though the Stamp Act crisis was over, 3 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:23.120 an important irritant in Anglo-American relations remained. During 1765, Grenville had passed the 4 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:29.120 Mutiny Act, which gave the British Army the right to quarter its troops in private American dwellings. 5 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:34.960 Originally, the troops were to be quartered in private homes, but the final bill, which 6 00:00:34.960 --> 00:00:42.380 Benjamin Franklin helped to draw up, limited houses open to seizure, to inns, unoccupied 7 00:00:42.380 --> 00:00:48.500 buildings and barns. The act also forced the colonial governments to furnish the soldiers 8 00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:55.500 with specified supplies. At the time, Franklin proudly proclaimed for the amended bill. Two 9 00:00:55.500 --> 00:01:01.060 Two years later, however, amidst colonial resistance to the measure, he had a convenient 10 00:01:01.060 --> 00:01:05.220 lapse of memory about his role in the affair. 11 00:01:05.220 --> 00:01:10.240 The object of the Mutiny Act was to conscript the houses of the colonists so as to allow 12 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:16.560 large bodies of British troops to be stationed in the seaports, since any possible enemies 13 00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:20.400 of the colonists were on the frontiers. 14 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:26.760 The purpose of quartering troops in the seaports could only be to intimidate and coerce the 15 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:27.760 colonist. 16 00:01:27.760 --> 00:01:34.440 For this service, the colonists would be forced to yield their dwellings to the Redcoats. 17 00:01:34.440 --> 00:01:41.760 During the Stamp Act crisis, the Mutiny Act was forgotten and went unenforced, but after 18 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:46.920 repeal of the Stamp Tax, problems under the Act came to the fore. 19 00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:52.960 Aside from the threat inherent in quartering the British troops, many colonists realized 20 00:01:52.960 --> 00:01:59.620 that the coercing of supplies was a tax in kind, every bit as bad in principle as any 21 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:06.620 tax levied in money. Was this new tax in kind to perform the work of the hated stamp tax? 22 00:02:07.260 --> 00:02:12.620 To compel the Americans to pay for British troops amongst them? 23 00:02:12.620 --> 00:02:17.640 The earliest and most important resistance took place in New York, the headquarters for 24 00:02:17.640 --> 00:02:23.580 the British Army and its commander-in-chief, General Thomas Gage. New York refused to obey 25 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:29.720 Gage's request for supplies under the Mutiny Act, and insisted on complying only partially 26 00:02:29.720 --> 00:02:37.220 with royal requisitions while demanding that England recompense the colony. Other colonies 27 00:02:37.220 --> 00:02:45.180 hedged on following suit. Most did not comply fully, but did not challenge the laws openly, 28 00:02:45.180 --> 00:02:51.900 and voted some supplies. Understandably, there was, so soon after the vigorous resistance 29 00:02:51.900 --> 00:02:58.780 to the Stamp Act, a general desire for respite. Notwithstanding, when the Massachusetts Council 30 00:02:58.780 --> 00:03:06.700 voted supplies and quarters to a British artillery troop, its action was met by a storm of denunciation 31 00:03:06.700 --> 00:03:12.820 from James Otis and the Assembly, and Sam Adams asked whether the Mutiny Act is not 32 00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:18.980 taxing the colonies as effectively as the Stamp Act. Otis called for a purge of the 33 00:03:18.980 --> 00:03:25.540 Council, and the Assembly refused to vote supplies, but in the end, it voted for partial 34 00:03:25.540 --> 00:03:32.420 compliance. Partial noncompliance also occurred in New Jersey. There, the Assembly denounced 35 00:03:32.420 --> 00:03:41.420 The Mutiny Act is being as much an act for laying taxes on the inhabitants as the Stamp Act, but then voted funds. 36 00:03:41.420 --> 00:03:51.420 However, it officially evaded full compliance by vaguely instructing a new set of commissioners to act according to the custom of the province. 37 00:03:51.420 --> 00:04:01.420 South Carolina partially complied but refused to include such specified supplies as salt and beer in its requisition. 38 00:04:01.420 --> 00:04:08.780 Apart from New York, the most principled resistance occurred in, and unlikely, because generally 39 00:04:08.780 --> 00:04:12.820 the least revolutionary colony, Georgia. 40 00:04:12.820 --> 00:04:21.700 Georgia demurred on even partial compliance until its 1767-68 session, when it followed 41 00:04:21.700 --> 00:04:26.120 the course of its neighboring sister colony, South Carolina. 42 00:04:26.120 --> 00:04:32.240 To the new Tory administration in England, this partial defiance of the Mutiny Act was 43 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:39.800 a red flag to the English bull. Now English troops as well as Parliament were being defied. 44 00:04:39.800 --> 00:04:46.120 The new Prime Minister, a supposed friend of American liberty, William Pitt, now the 45 00:04:46.120 --> 00:04:53.520 Earl of Chatham, lost no time in displaying his true feelings toward the colonies. Bolstering 46 00:04:53.520 --> 00:05:00.160 During Pitt's anger towards Americans was a petition of 240 New York merchants in late 47 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:07.640 1766 asking for free trade and for the virtual removal of the restrictive trade and navigation 48 00:05:07.640 --> 00:05:08.640 laws. 49 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:15.320 Arch-mercantilist and imperialist that he was, Pitt responded by inducing parliament in the 50 00:05:15.320 --> 00:05:22.620 restraining act of June 1767 to suspend the New York assembly completely until it was 51 00:05:22.620 --> 00:05:48.780 William Pitt had scarcely assumed the ministry, however, when his chronically intermittent 52 00:05:48.780 --> 00:05:55.700 Insanity took hold, and he lost de facto control over the course of the English government. 53 00:05:55.700 --> 00:06:04.300 Stepping into virtual power was a flashy playboy opportunist and unstable epileptic, the renegade 54 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:12.660 Whig Charles Champagne Charlie Townsend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the pit cabinet. 55 00:06:12.660 --> 00:06:19.300 This embodiment of opportunism, who had opposed repeal of the Stamp Act, soon decided upon 56 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:25.660 a tough, imperialist line toward the colonies. Part of this line was the crackdown on the 57 00:06:25.660 --> 00:06:33.420 New York Assembly. Here Townsend pursued a far shrewder course, for example, than Bedford, 58 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:39.220 who wanted to send a military force to crush the resistant colonies. Townsend saw that 59 00:06:39.220 --> 00:07:04.500 New York, as the most important and most defiant colony on the mutiny issue, was the obvious 60 00:07:04.500 --> 00:07:06.380 focal point. 61 00:07:06.380 --> 00:07:13.140 In making his move, Townsend decided on suspension of the assembly rather than outright military 62 00:07:13.140 --> 00:07:20.860 action. He was backed by Pitt, Grafton, Camden and Shelburne. In the cabinet, only the redoubtable 63 00:07:20.860 --> 00:07:27.180 liberal General Conway opposed the measure as coercion of the Americans. The potential 64 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:33.780 crisis over New York was eased when, at the same time that Britain was cracking down, 65 00:07:33.780 --> 00:07:40.260 The assembly itself was deciding to surrender. Over the opposition of the radicals, and by 66 00:07:40.260 --> 00:07:47.180 only a single vote, the assembly decided to comply fully with the Mutiny Act. Parliament's 67 00:07:47.180 --> 00:07:53.940 order for suspension never had to be enforced. New York capitulated easily, and with it the 68 00:07:53.940 --> 00:07:59.900 bulk of American resistance to the Mutiny Act. One reason for New York's flagging courage 69 00:07:59.900 --> 00:08:06.860 was the failure of two of its neighboring colonies, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, to give it any 70 00:08:06.860 --> 00:08:13.220 support. Connecticut, indeed, quartered the troops that New York had refused to supply.